The Knock-On Effect
by Morning Robber
Summary: A collection of depressing short stories dealing with the lives of the cast after the events of their respective story arcs. Jumps between endings with every chapter and will include a story for practically every character in the game, including the non-playable side characters.
1. Carol - Whirligig

People change.

For better or for worse, growth is an inevitability. Your growth may come early in life or later, from happiness or from despair, to the support or worry of your friends, your family, physically or mentally. You might find yourself saddled with a sudden responsibility, or confronted by an opportunity you couldn't afford to pass up. Whether or not you enjoy that responsibility, or capitalise on that opportunity, is growth nonetheless. You adopt new ideals, new philosophies, seemingly even when you're passing things up. It all sounds highly motivating, something a public speaker or a PR rep would say, but a lot of the centralised honey of growth is leaked out and skipped over. A lot of anguish, despair, what have you, can result from growth, and, might even be one of their main catalysts.

Surviving growth, learning to accommodate its nuances and accept its weaknesses, is growth in and of itself.

* * *

Trauma, it was a horrific thing.

Carol's brief period of monstrosity had left her with more than miscoloured patches of skin. She saw the world differently now, through a darker lens. Brief glimmers of cruelty, of narcissism and pettiness, seemed to highlight themselves and linger for uncomfortable periods of time. She had no capacity for the anger anymore, the treatment and the parasites had sapped it from her, surgically removed or altered the base need for it, husking an aspect of her personality to a hollow shell filled with a lingering nothingness. She could still see it, though. Brief glimpses of the past, overlayed in red, and the sadness, the regret and the sickness, they still rung true in her. She would cry sometimes, out of sadness, sprint away in an abnormal fear, crawl up and tremble until the despair washed away. Short-lived hallucinations would plague her in the light of day, shimmers of dirty wiring, shifting spikes beneath her skin, the blackened peripherals of the mask, and as she blinked again, they would dissolve past her pale skin, through dark indents along her arms.

Yes, the doctors had fixed her. Wonderful people, honestly, the best she had ever seen. Humanitarian types with a hunger for people like her, drives which pieced back her broken puzzle of flesh and rearranged her organs, carefully tore the parasites from her and sewed the split outcrops of her face back together. Perhaps they felt the need to atone for something, to fix what they couldn't in the past. That satisfaction she saw, the genuine smiles and sniffling from the theatre as she looked into a mirror for the first time, she felt as though they all saw someone different, someone from the past, someone lost to them that they, for the briefest of moments, could pretend to have lived. Perhaps it was that which drove doctors to do what they did.

She was functional now, but a few facets of herself had been lost during the surgery. Her back, for instance, now permanently disdended and mostly replaced, had been far too mutilated by the wheel to serve as a bone any longer. She felt some pain, not much, a sharp instant, at the most, when doing things like sitting down and bending over. Her shoulders and thighs were deformed beneath her clothes, from the gaping holes caused by the pins. Her skin was thin and easy to puncture, dark blue rivers protruding vividly from her body, particularly on her hands. Yes, she was functional, but perhaps not quite as much as the average person. Much of her appearance had been preserved, but remnants of her horror persisted that could never truly be fixed.

School had been a mixed bag for Carol. The teachers were supportive, and the students, regardless of how they normally acted, understood that something terrible had happened to her, but had a tendency of keeping their distance. She was a quiet girl, Carol, never having many friends to begin with, but after her saga, people began to avoid her out of fear rather than indifference. She was polite, happy, even began to smile more after the incident, but the students could only treat her at most with unshaded pity and isolation. She couldn't blame them, it was understandable to be afraid of her in such a state. She never gave it much thought. She had Filia, after all.

"It's a beautiful day."

Ah, Filia.

It really was a beautiful day. Maplecrest had its moments, its quiant township feel to the rumbling metropolis of New Meridian. The two of them idled lazily in the sun, soaking in the break on a summer's day. Filia had saved her from that fate, her and the monster beneath her little cream hat. She acted as though nothing had changed, that Carol had never gone missing, that the Skullgirl had never appeared. Never once did she glance sideways, leer or frown, show any thought to her scars. They were together again, the two of them, living their romanticised schoolgirl dream on the roof.

"It's getting hotter." Carol pulled on her collar, "I hope they fix the air conditioner soon."

She no longer paved her own way. As she trembled forward, a camaraderie of theatre masks carved her path for her. Casual nonchalance when discussing the situation, organised pity from students on direct orders from the teacher. Fake lunch breaks with friends, fake dinners with the family. She was only emulating it now, the life she had before it all, never confronting herself, never turning to face the monster she left behind, the monster who still grasped her ankles with mutilated fingers. Everyone, Filia included, acted as if she was normal, as if her scarred face didn't exist, as if her red eyes and weak bones were mere inconveniences, strange happenings she had simply woken up with one morning.

But she still saw cracks of it, pressured reactions that broke out from beneath Filia's skin. Her voice was still strained, from all the screaming, the anger, and so she still came out hoarse and boyish. Filia seemed to flinch at that, when she opened her mouth to speak, when she showed off her arms, when she exposed her body switching between uniforms for PE. Maybe that day had been worse for her, a little too hot, or perhaps she didn't get enough sleep last night, but Carol felt as though she couldn't stand it anymore. Suddenly, she disliked this facade of helpfulness, this conveinent disregard for the obvious in her life, and she swallowed once as her throat clamped shut, and a whimper managed to break through the gaps in her lips.

"Carol?" Filia peeked over, "...Carol, are you okay?"

She wasn't, and Filia seemed to notice it before she could reply. At once, the girl was on her, squeezing shoulders, lifting her chin and brushing back loose bangs. Carol noticed that, ever since her incident, she had been teetering gently on the threshold of a great abyss. She wanted someone to reach forward from behind her, to grab her back from the edge, but her lips were sealed. She couldn't cry for help. Perhaps it was only in the darkest moment of that scene, as she lost her footing and toppled over the cliff, that she suddenly found her words.

"I don't want this..." She was crying now, "I don't want to pretend that everything's alright. I'm not the same girl that I used to be..."

She stared up at Filia kneeling over her, doting like a worried mother, "I was Carol... Then, I was P-"

She paused, "...P-Painwheel. I was Painwheel. But now, who am I?"

Only a portion of her remained. That compelling shyness she had, now replaced by a crushing loneliness. Her anger, split from her body with the parasites, gouging her playfulness, her capacity for competition, for jealousy. Her scars still remained, the results of her experimentation, the concave imprints of the pins. She was a hybrid now, a split amalgamation of the two, living the life of Carol with the deformed and broken body of Painwheel. She couldn't see it; a method of bringing her back from what she used to be. The sights, the visions, the snowed stills of her past which split her head with an unimaginable pain, they would remind her forever, no amount of friends or pity or therapy would ever save her from it.

She was a pinwheel now. A torn, swirling whirligig of despair. She looked for it, one last answer to save her, staring up with teary eyes.

"Who am I, Filia?"


	2. Filia - Smiling

Hard it might be, to wave someone away - this ought to be something that everyone can have their own shake at. Teary-eyed farewells are romantic in their own way, so dramatic and separated from the everyday that there can't help but be something special in the process of it all - but it must be depressing nonetheless, this is an established sort of sadness which is so perverse in the way that it resurfaces, so easily remembered by way of things which then might only serve to hurt you. Isn't it always terrible, to have someone move away from home, not so suddenly but in a certain amount of time that a great numbness overcomes you as the days go along, as the calender creeps longingly towards its conclusion, as the days fast-forward and memories become so deathly important? Yes, it is always upsetting.

Perhaps it is upsetting still, to lose something as important as one's self, not willfully, through the development of one's character, but subjugated through force that the very facets of one's personality begin to crumble. It is then that the internalised despair blooms deeply within, as memories become obsolete, as the continuation of life becomes painful and filled with dread. Is this so upsetting as it is disturbing? Is it even possible for such a thing to happen? Imagine, as the self fades, overpowered, into, not obscurity, or forgetfulness, but into something else. Nonexistence, unremembered and, not forgotten, but vanished completely. This is a special kind of despair, in which memories can only last for so long. As sacrificial as one's life may be, this would truly be one of the worst ways to disappear.

* * *

It is the crest of early morning as the sun blooms dandelion-kissed amber, teetering gently on the horizon, as the hall fills with uneven chatter, louder, louder still, students speaking, occassionally shouting - there is a certain nostalgia to it, most people would feel, much older and so much more connected with the world, but it was not placed in such a person on that day, and it could not be as revelatory or fulfilling. The silver clocks strike their time, a conjoining of hands, into the beginning of the day where the head begins to wander, learn and inadvertently give up. 9:00am struck clear, tolling out that ring - such awful ringing, and the noise jumbled with eager chatter, some sighing, some giving their goodbyes, and in a total spread of efficiency the halls were empty again, the noise now filtered through doorways, movements glimpsed in brief actions through cracks leading into the classrooms.

She is tugged by her sleeve, "Filia? Are you alright?"

Someone might have jumped - her, no, not even close, in fact she found something endearing about those scars of hers - the ways that the lines intercrossed and patterned her head, so clear and unmasked. Even now, she smiled a terrible smile at Filia, and in her woefully red eyes there was something like a renewed happiness, or appreciation of life, so subtle and suppressed in a selfless way which was so much like her. That hypnotising stupor of hers had been broken yet again, those daydreams which were not quite daydreams that she had been losing herself in lately, by that smile. She, too, couldn't help but creep her lips at the perky worry in Carol's voice, "Don't worry about me. I'm just daydreaming."

"At least do your daydreaming in class. We're gonna be late."

They were friends, before and after - or, it could be said that their paths had crossed in a strange way that tied them together. Filia had known Carol, before what had happened, happened, in a simpler time when the two of them wasted away their days lounging on the roadside hillcrests, chatting skyward about nothing in particular. They were friends, certainly, but not in the close way they were now. Still, they emulated the days they had back then, almost as if nothing had happened. The elephant which inhabited their room had been encountered too many times already - now, they were content just letting it idle in the corner, forever only subtly acknowledged in the actions of one-another.

They sat far apart, but something like that didn't bother Filia. Carol had been doing her best to make friends, and in the weeks she had been back, the class had calmed down a little about the way she looked. Nothing much was said, 'Carol is Carol', they said, and it was as if nothing had ever happened. It was the best outcome, the one she always hoped for. Filia had found herself a little dejected from school recently, like the learning had started to lose its meaning. Often times, she simply rested with her hand on her chin - something had started to tire her out ferociously. The chatter of the classroom died down, but only in her head, where a great silence had begun to make itself known. The sensation was like - Filia thought, but there was nothing that could compare to it. Back then, Carol once caught her cheek with one of the spikes from underneath her skin. It hurt, so perhaps it was like that, but there was nothing like the relief from having avoided it. No, there was something inescapable that grew in her mind.

Yes - the Skull Heart. It wasn't something she liked to remember. Some artifact - or, she thought, it might even be alive, like a demon. It was a firmly established thing, not folklore, but a real danger. It could grant any women's wish - whatever they pleased, it was theirs to take, so long as they made their wish selfless, completely devoid of any personal gain or accomplishment of one's pride. But it could not be so simple as wishing for the benefit of someone else, as Filia found out the hard way. It was her desire, after all, to want Carol back, not simply so that she could live the life she wanted, make the friends she needed. Filia herself wanted her back, to be friends with her again, to experience those drafty sunsets on the school roof, chatting about nothing - not a single thing, until the sun vanished. In that way, she was selfish about her desires to the Heart, but the toll wasn't something of hers - her life, or karmic. What had the previous Skullgirl desired? Did she also make a 'selfless' wish, for the sake of someone else? Was the carnage she caused worth it, for what she received in return?

Everyday, that feeling returned. It was obvious what was coming - though she hadn't told Carol about it. To know that her wish was for nothing wasn't something that could be put into words so easily. How long would it take? Weeks? Years? What worth would her memories have if she was destined to lose them? Where would 'she' go? The real 'Filia', not the Skullgirl she was destined to become? What did Carol mean to her when confronted with the abyss of her own mind, unable to control her own body? Or, would it not be something so simple? What kind of feelings would she develop, that could lead her to cause so much trouble for the Kingdom? She was afraid of that day, whenever it would come, more than anything. Again, she felt it, that familiar tug, and with a heavier heart she confronted the wry smirk of that scarred girl, so excitable and starry-eyed, lugging that case of hers around, that she could only be sent further into that grief, surrounded by unknowing people.

"Come on, Filia, class is over. You're usually the first one out the door, you know?"

But, her happiness mattered, now more than ever, and even confronted with the truth, she couldn't help but smile.

"Yeah. Let's get going."


End file.
